Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Canadian government trends foreshadow America's future as Quebec Christians are forbidden to opt their children out of the state religion curriculum that teaches moral relativism, and Alberta Christian schools, and even homeschoolers, are forbidden to teach that homosexual behavior is sinful.

“The long arm of the government wants to reach into family’s homes and control what they teach to their own children in their own homes about religion, sexuality, and morality.”

The new curriculum, mandated by the Quebec Ministry of Education as of September 2008, has sparked a loud outcry from numerous sectors of the province, including secularists, nationalists, and religious believers. Spanning grades 1 to 11, the relativist course aims to promote an "absolute respect" (as one course developer described it) for the spectrum of religions and ethical choices. It replaced a previous religious education program that allowed parents to choose between a Catholic, Protestant, or secular curriculum.

"This is not a course in religious culture. It is a course in multiculturalism," said . . . Joelle Querin, a sociologist and researcher who works with the Institut de recherche sur le Québec (Institute of Research on Quebec). "All conceptions of life are considered valid," she says. "The only thing presented as indisputable is the way to cope with this ethical diversity. There stops the relativism, since children must 'select privileged actions that promote coexistence,' that is to say, acting in accordance with the doctrine of pluralism."

"As parents seek to inculcate certain values to their children of six to eight years of age," she says further, "[the children] learn in school that these values are relative and that they are free to develop their own ethical life."

The curriculum, for example, presents homosexual families as normal. In grade 1 and 2 the course has the goal: "to bring children to explore the diversity of relationships of interdependence between members of different types of families."

. . . Paul Faris of the Home School Legal Defence Association said the Ministry of Education is “clearly signaling that they are in fact planning to violate the private conversations families have in their own homes.”

“You can affirm the family’s ideology in your family life, you just can’t do it as part of your educational study and instruction,” a government spokesperson told LifeSiteNews.“A government that seeks that sort of control over our personal lives should be feared and opposed,” he added.

Section 16 of the new legislation restates the current School Act’s requirement that schools “reflect the diverse nature” of Alberta in their curriculum, but it adds that they must also “honour and respect” the controversial Alberta Human Rights Act that has been used to target Christians with traditional beliefs on homosexuality. ‘School’ is defined to include homeschoolers and private schools in addition to publicly funded school boards.

Pro-family observers warned that the ruling risked emboldening other provincial governments in their effort to impose “diversity” programs. The last two years have seen major battles in Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, and now Alberta over the increasing normalization of homosexuality in the schools.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Muskegon, Michigan public school leaders plan to indoctrinate kids as young as age nine with the sexual revolutionaries' Gay Agenda, including trends in child sexual mutilation, as well as bring parents up-to-date in accommodating diversity of sexual deviancy.

The current sex ed curriculum for fourth- and fifth-graders has not been updated for about a decade and leaves out critical information that elementary students need, Isabel Blake-Evans, the district’s executive director of secondary education, told the school board.

Among the changes being recommended are no longer separating girls and boys for sex education, discussing homosexuality and transgender issues and more frank discussion about sexual intercourse.

Discussion of homosexuality and transgender issues will be incorporated with diversity and bullying instruction.

Teachers also are having a hard time when questions arise that the current abstinence-based curriculum doesn't allow them to answer, Blake-Evans said.

. . . the curriculum will help students and parents alike. Students will be required to complete some assignments with parents, which will help get conversations going at home . . .

The state’s true goal in adopting the rules at issue was not to promote the timely access to medicine, but to suppress religious objections by druggists who believe that such drugs can have an effect tantamount to abortion, U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton said in his ruling Wednesday.

Washington’s rules require that pharmacies stock and dispense drugs for which there is a demand. The state adopted the dispensing regulations in 2007, following reports that some women had been denied access to Plan B, which has a high dose of medicine found in birth-control pills and is effective if a woman takes it within 72 hours of unprotected sex.

“The most compelling evidence that the rules target religious conduct is the fact the rules contain numerous secular exemptions,” the judge said. “In sum, the rules exempt pharmacies and pharmacists from stocking and delivering lawfully prescribed drugs for an almost unlimited variety of secular reasons, but fail to provide exemptions for reasons of conscience.”

"A pharmacy is permitted to refuse to stock oxycodone because it fears robbery, but the same pharmacy cannot refuse to stock Plan B because it objects on religious grounds," the judge wrote. "Why are these reasons treated differently under the rules?"

The judge also accused the state of enforcing the mandate selectively, noting that regulators had not opened cases against the many Catholic-affiliated pharmacies in the state that also refuse to dispense Plan B.

Leighton concluded in his opinion that the rules in question "are not neutral," adding: "They are designed instead to force religious objectors to dispense Plan B, and they sought to do so despite the fact that refusals to deliver for all sorts of secular reasons were permitted."

The ruling only applies to Washington state but is sure to reverberate nationally . . .

The new regulations made it illegal to refer patients to neighboring pharmacies for reasons of conscience, despite allowing them to refer patients elsewhere for a wide variety of business, economic, or convenience reasons. Because of the regulations, Margo Thelen lost her job; Rhonda Mesler was told she would have to transfer to another state; and Kevin Stormans, the owner of Ralph’s Thriftway, faced repeated investigations and threats of punishment from the State Board of Pharmacy.

The plaintiffs in the case are a family-owned pharmacy (Ralph’s Thriftway) and two individual pharmacists (Margo Thelen and Rhonda Mesler) who cannot in good conscience dispense Plan B (“the morning-after pill”) or ella (“the week-after pill”). They filed suit seeking the right to refuse to stock or dispense the drugs.

A lower court issued an injunction against the new rules, on the basis that the suit was likely to succeed. In 2009, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the lower court ruling that had temporarily put on hold a requirement for pharmacists to dispense all legal drugs.

Now back at the lower court level ruling on the merits of the case itself, the court issued the pharmacists a legal victory.

In his opinion, Judge Leighton recalled the controversy that gave rise to the Board of Pharmacy's 2007 rules. In 2006, the board adopted a draft rule allowing conscientious objectors to opt out of giving emergency contraception.

Governor Christine Gregoire, however, objected to the rules, declaring that “no one should be denied appropriate prescription drugs based on the personal, religious, or moral objection of individual pharmacists.”

Gregoire threatened to replace the entire board if it adopted the draft rule. Its final rule drew from proposals by Planned Parenthood and the Northwest Women’s Law Center, and included provisions Judge Leighton said were meant “to eliminate conscientious objection.”

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Slate Magazine (with the Washington Post) has published a well-documented "hit piece" on Mitt Romney's alleged changing story of his pro-choice/pro-life conversion(s). It's odd for the mainstream (liberal) media to take the side of pro-life critics of Romney, but perhaps a weakened Mitt Romney and/or triumphant Rick Santorum is their desired outcome.

To understand Mitt Romney, you have to understand the most difficult passage of his political life: how he changed his position on abortion. Not the story he tells about it, but the real story.

Romney began his political career as a pro-choicer. In the story he tells, he had an epiphany, a flash of insight, and committed himself thereafter to protecting life. But that isn’t what happened. The real story of Romney’s conversion—a series of tentative, equivocal, and confused shifts, accompanied by a constant rewriting of his past—paints a more accurate picture of who he is. Romney has complex views and a talent for framing them either way, depending on his audience. He values truth, so he makes sure there’s an element of it in everything he says. He can’t stand to break his promises, so he reinterprets them.

Parts of the story have been told before. But no one has put it together. And no one has assembled the many video and audio clips that bear witness to what happened. In this article, the first complete examination of Romney’s journey, you’ll see his transformation on camera.

The problem with Romney isn’t that he keeps changing his mind. The problem is that he keeps changing his story.

To read the entire article, CLICK HERE -- see the Slate story in the video below:

In the case of a California lesbian denied spousal health benefits of her "wife" by her federal employer, wherein the Obama Administration filed a court brief in favor of benefits for the "married" couple, a federal district judge has ruled the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional and has ruled the federal employer to provide the disputed spousal benefits.

Congressional Republicans in the House have appealed the case (to the 9th Circuit appeals court) to defend DOMA.

The ruling came from U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco who was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush.

Congress passed DOMA in 1996 and President Bill Clinton signed it into law. It prevents same-sex couples who are legally married in a handful of states from enjoying more than 1,000 federal benefits awarded to heterosexual married couples.

Plaintiff Karen Golinski has worked as a staff attorney for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco for over 20 years.

She sued the U.S. government after it refused to enroll her spouse, Amy Cunninghis, on her federal family health insurance plan. The couple married during a five-month legal window in California before voters in 2008 passed Proposition 8, a gay marriage ban.

The DOMA case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Karen Golinski vs. United States Office of Personnel Management and John Berry, 10-257.

White ordered the Office of Personnel Management to enroll the wife of Karen Golinski, an attorney for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in the health benefits program available to other federal judiciary employees.

It was also a setback for the conservative-dominated Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, the U.S. House of Representatives panel that intervened to defend the statute after Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said the administration would no longer do so.

At a December hearing in White's San Francisco courtroom, lawyers for the five-member House panel argued that the Defense of Marriage Act was enacted to protect and nurture traditional opposite-sex marriage. They also submitted evidence of "some fluidity" in the commitment of homosexuals to that identity, urging the judge to reconsider 9th Circuit rulings that homosexuality is "a defining and immutable characteristic."

In his 43-page ruling, White said "tradition alone" doesn't justify legislation that targets a vulnerable social group.

"The obligation of the court is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code," White wrote. "The 'ancient lineage' of a classification does not render it legitimate."

Cunninghis was Golinski's domestic partner for 13 years before they married in 2008, during the brief period when gay marriage was legalized in California by order of the California Supreme Court. The Office of Personnel Management claimed DOMA, which does not recognize same-sex marriage, precluded Cunninghis from receiving benefits as Golinski's wife.

"The passage of DOMA marks a stark departure from tradition and a blatant disregard of the well-accepted concept of federalism in the area of domestic relations," U.S. District Judge Jeffery White ruled. "In this matter, the court finds that DOMA, as applied to Ms. Golinski, violates her right to equal protection of the law under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution by, without substantial justification or rational basis, refusing to recognize her lawful marriage to prevent provision of health insurance coverage to her spouse."

White rejected arguments offered by the congressional group for DOMA's application to Golinski, including that DOMA protects the government's interest in promoting procreation through marriage. "To the extent Congress was interested merely in encouraging responsible procreation and child-rearing by opposite-sex married couples, a desire to encourage opposite-sex couples to procreate and raise their own children well would not provide a legitimate reason for denying federal recognition of same-sex marriages," White wrote. "Accordingly, the court finds that the first proffered reason for the passage of DOMA - to encourage responsible procreation and child-rearing - does not provide a justification that is substantially related to an important governmental objective."

A Republican-led House of Representatives group announced Friday it will appeal a decision in which a federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday struck down the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act.

Friday, the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, led by Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, filed a notice of appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The advisory group is made up of the House of Representatives' three majority leaders and two minority leaders. The efforts to defend DOMA are supported by the group's three Republicans but not by its two Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

Friday, February 24, 2012

The Maryland legislature has narrowly passed a so-called gay marriage law, which Democrat Gov. Martin O'Malley has promised to sign, but residents will likely have the opportunity to negate the law in November, via a referendum backed by the Catholic church and evangelical Christians alike.

"This issue has taken a lot of energy, as well it should, and I'm very proud of the House of Delegates and also the Senate for resolving this issue on the side of human dignity, and I look forward to signing the bill," O'Malley said in a brief interview after the Senate vote.

Opponents, though, have vowed to bring the measure to referendum in November. They will need to gather at least 55,726 valid signatures of Maryland voters to put it on the ballot and can begin collecting names now that the bill has passed both chambers.

Some churches and clergy members have spoken out against the bill, saying it threatens religious freedoms and violates their tradition of defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Leaders at the Human Rights Campaign, a group that joined a coalition of organizations to campaign for the bill, said they expect opponents will gather the required number of signatures.

An amendment to the bill submitted by Republican Delegate Wade Kach means no same-sex marriages can occur in the state until the new law takes effect on Jan. 1. Kach voted for the bill, but he said the amendment would allow any referendum to take its course and provide enough time for any legal challenges to its result to be settled.

A similar effort to legalize gay marriage in Maryland failed last year after it died in the House of Delegates without coming to a vote. In July 2011, O’Malley, a Democrat, announced he would include a gay marriage law in his legislative package that would allow religious organizations to refuse to conduct same-sex weddings.

The other states that allow gay marriage are Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York. Washington and Maryland would become the seventh and eighth if the referendum challenges failed. Washington, D.C., also allows gay

The Maryland Catholic Conference issued a statement shortly after the vote, saying the Senate rushed the bill through in 48 hours and described the bill's protection for religious organizations as "ambiguous" and "limited."

"Stripping marriage of its unique connection to parenthood erases from civil law the right of a child to a mother and father, and ignores an essential question of why government favors marriage between one man and one woman over all other relationships. That right was consistently ignored by proponents of the bill to redefine marriage, in favor of the claim that we must redefine marriage in order to provide legal protections to any two people who love each other. There are many ways to provide such protections; redefining marriage is not one of them."

"The enormous public outcry that this legislation has generated -- voiced by Marylanders that span political, racial, social and religious backgrounds -- demonstrates a clear need to take this issue to a vote of the people. Every time this issue has been brought to a statewide vote, the people have upheld traditional marriage. When this issue reaches the November ballot, we are confident that the citizens of Maryland will join voters in 31 other states in upholding marriage between one man and one woman."

Cardinal Edwin O'Brien returned on Thursday to Baltimore after having been elevated to cardinal in Rome. His office released the following statement Thursday evening.

". . . Maryland's politicians unconscionably have chosen political expediency over the good of society -- the fundamental charge of their office -- by daring to redefine this sacred union between one man and one woman. Their action poses a grave threat to the future stability of the nuclear family and the society it anchors. The Archdiocese will continue to advocate for the preservation of both and will eagerly and zealously engage its 500,000 members in overturning this radical legislation, and will join with the hundreds of thousands of others in this Archdiocese and throughout Maryland in aggressively protecting the God-given institution of marriage."

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Indiana state Rep. Bob Morris is being ridiculed by liberals and fellow Republicans for his vocal Christian discernment of the Girl Scouts of America regarding his own daughters. He has refused to sign on to legislation honoring the organization.

Mainstream journalists, who are entirely ignorant of the facts of the liberal take-over of the Girl Scouts, are literally laughing at the lawmaker's position.

The scouts and Planned Parenthood have dismissed Rep. Bob Morris’ comments as absurd, as did Republican House Speaker Brian Bosma. But Morris, a Republican, told The Associated Press his critics need to do more research into the 100-year-old scouting organization.

“My family and I took a view and we’re sticking by it,” Morris said Tuesday, adding that his daughters were joining an alternative group for young girls run by conservative Christians. “My girls are no longer Girl Scouts. They’re now going to join American Heritage Girls.”

Morris’ comments were the butt of jokes inside the House on Tuesday, with Bosma spending much of the day handing out Thin Mints to lawmakers. He joked that Morris’ comments led him to buy hundreds of cases of the famous Girl Scout cookies.

Morris, in his letter to lawmakers, said some Christian conservatives who share his concerns have pulled their children out of Girl Scouts. He also pointed to a Colorado Girl Scout troop’s acceptance of a transgender child last month as another reason to leave the group.

In a letter to his Republican colleagues at the Indiana statehouse, first obtained by the Journal-Gazette of Fort Wayne, Morris called the group a “radicalized organization” that backs abortion and promotes the “homosexual lifestyle.” Of the 50 role models that Girl Scouts study, Morris argued that, “only three have a briefly mentioned religious background; all the rest are feminists, lesbians or communists.”

Morris, who said he had done, “a small amount of Web-based research” on the matter, claimed that, “the agenda of Planned Parenthood includes sexualizing young girls through the Girl Scouts, which is quickly becoming a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood.”

Morris has two daughters who are part of the group but, he said, he sought out a specific troop for them that is anti-abortion. The organization overall, he wrote in his letter, “has been subverted in the name of liberal progressive politics and the destruction of traditional American family values.”

The married father of six and Indiana University graduate is the owner and founder of a chain of retail stores called Healthkick Nutrition Centers.

[Deana Potterf, director of communications for Girl Scouts of Central Indiana, said concerning] accepting transgender females into Girl Scouts, "If a child presents herself as a girl in Girl Scouts, she is welcome to participate."

Asked why he thinks the Girl Scouts support abortion, Morris said people should "get on the Internet, do some research, contact the Girl Scouts of America on a national level and ask them that question."

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Children of America experience the most significant "class division" of the nation: Those born to married parents, and the rest who are likely destined to poverty, crime, and dependence on a nanny-state government.

Traditional marriage, childbirth, and financial stability predominates among Christians and college graduates.

Sixty-three percent of all births to women under 30 in Lorain County [Ohio] occur outside marriage, according to Child Trends [see below], a research center in Washington. That figure has risen by more than two-thirds over the past two decades, and now surpasses the national figure of 53 percent.

The change has transformed life in Lorain, a ragged industrial town on Lake Erie. Churches perform fewer weddings. Applications for marriage licenses are down by a third. Just a tenth of the students at the local community college are married, but its campus has a bustling day care center.

Older residents blamed the decline in marriage on government aid. Mary Grasso, a retired sweet shop owner, said men had stopped taking responsibility for their children because the state had stepped in with safety net programs. Ms. Grasso, 70, experienced the decline in weddings directly: Wedding cake orders fell by half during the 30-plus years she was in business.

Having children outside of marriage—nonmarital childbearing—has been on the rise across several decades in the United States. In 2009, 41 percent of all births (about 1.7 million) occurred outside of marriage, compared with 28 percent of all births in 1990 and just 11 percent of all births in 1970.12,20 Preliminary data suggest that this percentage has remained stable in 2010. There are several reasons to be concerned about the high level of nonmarital childbearing. Couples who have children outside of marriage are younger, less healthy, and less educated than are married couples who have children. Children born outside of marriage tend to grow up with limited financial resources; to have less stability in their lives because their parents are more likely to split up and form new unions; and to have cognitive and behavioral problems, such as aggression and depression. Indeed, concerns about the consequences of nonmarital childbearing helped motivate the major reform of welfare that occurred in 1996, and continue to motivate the development of federally funded pregnancy prevention programs among teenagers and marriage promotion programs among adults.

This Research Brief draws from multiple published reports using data through 2009, as well as from Child Trends’ original analyses of data from a nationally representative survey of children born in 2001, to provide up-to-date information about nonmarital childbearing; to describe the women who have children outside of marriage; and to examine how these patterns have changed over time. As nonmarital childbearing has become more commonplace, the makeup of women having children outside of marriage has changed, often in ways that challenge public perceptions. For example, an increasing percentage of women who have a birth outside of marriage live with the father of the baby in a cohabiting union and are over the age of twenty. Moreover, the percentage of women having a birth outside of marriage has increased faster among white and Hispanic women than among black women.

For Americans with a college degree, divorce is down, marital quality is stable, and family stability is up since the divorce revolution of the 1970s and early 1980s, according to research I have conducted.

However, marriage is in trouble not only in poor communities but also increasingly in Middle America -- communities where most people have a high school degree but not a four-year college degree. For Americans without a college degree, divorce remains high, marital quality is falling, and nonmarital childbearing is surging.

In general, children born and raised in a married household are more likely to graduate from college, find employment and enjoy stable marriages as adults.

Likewise, married adults are happier and less depressed than their unmarried peers. And because they work harder, act more strategically and carefully after they tie the knot, men enjoy a wage premium that may exceed 10% compared with their single peers. Married men are also much less likely to abuse alcohol, drugs or run into trouble with the law, compared with their unmarried peers.

I have been fascinated by the coverage of Charles Murray’s new book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 . . .

Murray attributes the problem to several factors: a reduction in available jobs for those with high school educations, a decline in religiosity, and a disappearing stigma against out-of-wedlock births and divorce, among others.

Among white women under 30, only 8% of those with a college degree have children out of wedlock. For those who have never attended college, more than half of children - 51% - are now born to unmarried mothers.

Nonmarital childbearing has increased substantially over the past several decades for all groups of women. Between 1970 and 2009, the percentage of all births that took place outside of marriage increased from 11 to 41 percent. Increases in nonmarital births have been more dramatic among white and Hispanic women than among black women.

Women in their twenties have the highest levels of nonmarital childbearing. In 2009, 62 percent of all nonmarital births occurred to women aged 20-29; only 21 percent occurred to teens.

A majority of all births that occurred outside of marriage were unintended--either mistimed or not wanted (50 percent of all births to cohabiting couples and 65 percent of all births to couples not married or cohabiting).

The rise in the number of children being born outside of marriage-among all groups-is linked to broader changes in family structure, most notably increases in cohabitation.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Psychiatrists are publishing opinions that parents with children suffering from Gender Identity Disorder (GID) should let these professionals counsel, and drug the children through a years-long process to allow sex change surgery; parents who don't conform are being accused of child abuse.

Offering sex-changing treatment to children younger than 18 raises ethical concerns, and their parents’ motives need to be closely examined.-- Dr. Margaret Moon, American Academy of Pediatrics’s Bioethics Committee

In a sample of children and adolescents treated at the Endocrine Division at Children's Hospital Boston, young people who experienced distress about the "mismatch" between their body's sex and their mental gender had high rates of psychiatric complications (before any gender treatment). Kids who don't get treatment, whether for financial reasons or because their parents aren't supportive, likely have higher rates of psychiatric problems, said study researcher Scott Leibowitz, a psychiatrist at Children's Hospital Boston.

Transgender people — people who feel that their biological sex does not reflect their true gender — have astonishingly high rates of mental health problems: A 2010 survey found that 41 percent of transgender people in the U.S. have attempted suicide.

Researchers attributed those rates to discrimination and stigma, as well as a lack of laws protecting transgender people from employment discrimination. Poor insurance coverage of hormones and other treatments to help a transgender person transition to their desired gender also account for the rates, the researchers found.

. . . children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.

These children sometimes resort to self-mutilation to try to change their anatomy; the other two journal reports note that some face verbal and physical abuse and are prone to stress, depression and suicide attempts. Spack said those problems typically disappear in kids who've had treatment and are allowed to live as the opposite sex.

"These kids are really normal -- they just want to be the other gender," said [Dr. Walter] Meyer, a psychiatrist who works with transgender patients at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston. "The ones who are well-adjusted and well-accepted by their families and at school don't have the psychiatric issues."

"We've seen in studies of gender nonconforming LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] youth that what most people think of as abuse comes from a place of concern and fear on the part of parents -- that is, they think they can help their kid by 'toughening them up' or teaching them to 'fit in,' " [professor of family studies at the University of Arizona, Stephen] Russell said. "Many parents literally have no framework for understanding gender nonconformity in children."

Meyer, meanwhile, said he sees signs of growing awareness and acceptance, spurred by the media. Once parents are onboard, treatment can begin, sometimes quite early, he said.

"At age 5 or 6, treatment is mainly psychotherapy and working with family to help them [kids] adjust," Meyer said. "Sometimes that means reassuring them and letting them dress up at home [as the opposite gender]. Some might start school taking on a new gender."

Some estimates say about 1 in 10,000 children may have GID, Dr. Norman Spack, author of one of three reports published Monday and director of one of the nation's first gender identity medical clinics, at Children's Hospital Boston . . .

Laura Edwards-Leeper, a psychologist specializing in youth gender issues at Seattle's Children's Hospital and co-author of the Pediatrics study, says at her hospital, “more and more people are banging down the doors to get in. I'm guessing in part this is due to media attention and people becoming a bit more accepting about it. Parents are becoming more open to the possibility and willing to get help for their kids."

Sometimes, the response of parents -- or others -- can be quite damaging. A related study of childhood abuse in the current issue of Pediatrics found gender nonconformity before age 11 was a risk indicator for physical, sexual, and psychological abuse in childhood as well as probable PTSD.

"By stopping puberty early on, a boy won't grow as tall, his facial hair won't come in, his Adam's apple won't develop," [Edwards-Leeper] says. "All the things that make it difficult for adult transgender people to pass are eliminated. The quality of life for transgender people who have been fortunate enough to receive puberty blocking medication is so much better."

Sunday, February 19, 2012

The Dixon (Missouri) High School administration forbid students' promotion of "Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity" because their posters were deemed to be offensive, yet promotion of many other controversial events, including the annual pro-homosexual "Day of Silence," were permitted.

The Alliance Defense Fund is filing suit on behalf of a Missouri student whose pro-life posters were taken down at school while other posters including ones with graphic depictions of zombies were allowed to remain.

Matt Sharp, the ADF attorney who works at the ADF's Public School Litigation Team, told The Christian Post that [he] found it interesting that although the school took down the pro-life posters, posters not taken down include ones showcasing students as "bloody zombies" and the school's Gay-Straight Alliance's "Day of Silence."

Founded by Brian Kemper, "Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity" is a nationwide event to take place on Oct. 16 in which students will wear red duct tape with the word "LIFE" written in black.

The case, J.A. v. Dixon R-1 School District, was filed at the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Southern Division.To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

. . . students routinely are allowed to make announcements concerning events of interest to students.

However, the flyers and announcements promoting the Pro-Life Day have been censored.

“What is offensive is the double-standard here,” said ADF Litigation Counsel Matt Sharp. “Public school officials cannot pick and choose what messages they are going to allow based on which viewpoints they prefer. ADF has litigated numerous cases similar to this one, and the law and the Constitution are clearly on our side here as well.”

“The district’s censorship of plaintiff’s religious, pro-life speech, and the policies on which that censorship was based, violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and the Missouri Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” the complaint contends.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

As Planned Parenthood kicked off the annual celebration of "National Condom Week" for Valentines Day, a California school conducted a "LoveFest" where children were encouraged to marry their same-sex best friend for extra credit and were graded on how well they could put on a condom by teachers wearing T-shirts saying "Gay? Fine by me."

Susan Kitchell, the school nurse at Galileo High [in San Francisco], said the event, called "LoveFest," aimed to educate students about sexual health and healthy relationships.

The lunchtime event, sponsored by the school's gay-straight alliance and the San Francisco Wellness Initiative, gave students the opportunity to "marry" anyone they chose in a mock wedding.

The students also played educational games and learned about issues such as sexually transmitted disease prevention and safe sex practices, said Jacqueline Peters, a sponsor of the gay-straight alliance at Galileo High School.

"Celebrating the condom!" says Planned Parenthood affiliate. "This front-line warrior in the battle for your sexual health often gets a 'bad wrap.' Of all the tools in our sexual health toolkits, what else puts itself out there literally as a physical barrier between you and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), AND between you and unintended pregnancy?"

Deeper into the posting, however, the Planned Parenthood site warns that people sometimes still get venereal diseases when using condoms.

"When it comes to STDs, condoms prevent skin-to-skin contact, helping prevent against the spread of STDs. But it is still possible to spread STDs that are occurring outside the protected area," said the Planned Parenthood site.

As Planned Parenthood kicks off National Condom Week tomorrow, it will also be actively engaged in selling sex to children as young as those in grade school with graphic videos and books.

The American Life League has compiled a video exposing some of Planned Parenthood’s disturbing materials that are presented to school-age children across the country.

In one section the video, “Hooking Kids on Sex,” talks about a book for 10-year-olds with graphic images about how to masturbate, put on a condom and have sexual intercourse.

“If a dirty old man showed this book to kids in a park, he’d be arrested,” said Sedlak. “Why does Planned Parenthood, a taxpayer-funded organization, get to distribute these books to our children and get more government money?’

Friday, February 17, 2012

The Obama administration's re-election scheme pits virtually all Christians against the sexual revolutionary forces of the feminists, homosexualists, and the religious left. The president's side believes most Americans are hedonistic, and thus will join with them, against the Christians.

Welcome to the culture wars 2.0, where the front lines now are religious freedom and contraceptives. Abortion? Gay marriage? Those are so last year.

The White House seems to have assuaged the concerns of liberal and moderate religious voices, particularly Catholics, who complained that the U.S. Health and Human Services mandate on contraceptive coverage violated religious freedom of conscience. The policy now includes a wide exemption for religious groups; requires insurance companies, instead of religious employers, to foot the bill; and still includes a year to hammer out the details.

But now, the issue is firmly entrenched in a political battle on Capitol Hill [where] Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, testified: "The administration impedes religious liberty by unilaterally redefining what it means to be religious."

Craig Mitchell, an associate professor from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said the HHS policy, "... is not just wrong for religious conservatives, it's wrong for all Americans."

Under this [White House mandated] solution, all health-insurance plans in the United States would be forced by the government to cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients free of charge. But, as Obama described it, if a woman works for a religious hospital or charity that objects to these services, the insurance company -- not the employer -- would pay to provide the services to the woman free of charge.

Late on Friday, the Catholic bishops responded, saying that this “solution” was “unacceptable.”

“It would still mandate that all insurers must include coverage for the objectionable services in all the policies they would write,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement.

The top U.S. Catholic bishop vowed legislative and court challenges Tuesday to a compromise by President Barack Obama to his healthcare mandate that now exempts religiously affiliated institutions from paying directly for birth control for their workers, instead making insurance companies responsible.

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in an interview with The Associated Press that he trusted Obama wasn't anti-religious and intended to make good on his pledge to work with religious groups to fine-tune the mandate.

"Does the federal government have the right to tell a religious individual or a religious entity how to define yourself?" Dolan asked. "This is what gives us greater chill."

Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said the main concern is that the so-called "choking mandates" remain. In addition many Catholic entities are self-insured. It remains unclear how they would get around the mandate to provide services that they consider morally illicit.

The Obama administration maintains that its plan to have health insurers pay for birth control offered to employees of religious groups won't end up costing the industry. But insurers aren't so confident.

The administration has said insurers should ultimately make up any initial costs by avoiding expenses associated with unintended pregnancies. But a new survey of 15 large health plans shows they are dubious of such savings.

Asked what impact the requirement will have on their costs in the year to two years after it goes into effect, 40 percent of the participants said they expect the requirement will increase costs through higher pharmacy expenses.

Of the health plans, 20 percent said costs would even out because they already budget for contraception in the premium, 6.7 percent said it would drive up pharmacy costs but decrease medical costs, while 33.3 percent weren't sure. None said it would lead to net savings.

But insurers may still seek ways to pass through such costs, either by increasing premiums to the same [religious] employers or to other corporate clients.

Christie — and most Republican lawmakers — want the issue decided by public vote. One GOP lawmaker, Sen. Kip Bateman of Somerset, has proposed a ballot question asking voters to allow same-sex nuptials. However, Democrats who control the Legislature maintain that gay marriage is a civil right protected by the U.S. Constitution and isn’t subject to popular vote.

“We call for him to support this bipartisan piece of legislation. Gov. Christie has had a forward-leaning approach to many issues - he’s a full supporter of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, civil unions, and he appointed an openly gay justice to the state Supreme Court,” Berle said. “With that track record, the logical step would be to support the freedom to marry in the Garden State.”

Thursday, February 16, 2012

As usual, homosexualists and the religious left, calling themselves "Faithful America," demonstrate their intolerance toward Christians, through their bigoted campaign to force MSNBC to sanitize their cable news network of any Bible-believing Evangelical voices, including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

[Homosexual activists] delivered a petition filled with 20,000 signatures to MSNBC on Tuesday.

According to its website, FRC seeks to "advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and public opinion." The non-profit organization based in Washington D.C. was identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for making "false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science." The Southern Poverty Law Center also said that FRC's intention was to "denigrate LGBT people in its battles against same-sex marriage, hate crimes laws, anti-bullying programs and the repeal of the military’s 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' policy."

"They say the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a risk to children," Perkins previously said on "Hardball with Chris Matthews." On the "Washington Watch Weekly" radio show, Perkins said that, "at its base, terrorism is a strike against the general populous simply to spread fear and intimidation just so they can disrupt and destabilize the system of government. That's what the homosexuals are doing here to the legal system."

. . . The Right Rev. V. Gene Robinson, who delivered the invocation at President Obama's inaugural ceremonies [said] “We are asking MSNBC to stop showcasing this hate group and their vile language. We all know that if you repeat a lie often enough, people begin to believe it.”

“It’s inexcusable that an organization that falsely accuses gays and lesbians of child molestation has any place in our media debates, much less a high-profile platform at a network like MSNBC,” said Michael Sherrard, head of Faithful America. “It’s past time for MSNBC to start representing the views of progressive people of faith and stop legitimizing hateful, dishonest claims from the Religious Right.”

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The latest professional sports superstar/hero, New York Knicks' Jeremy Lin, electrifies fans with his basketball abilities, and even as he publicly praises his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, he does NOT generate public hatred like the reaction to NFL quarterback Tim Tebow's public displays of Christian faith. Why not?

"There is so much temptation to hold on to my career even more now -- to try to micromanage and dictate every little aspect. But that's not how I want to do things anymore. I'm thinking about how can I trust God more. How can I surrender more? How can I bring him more glory?-- Jeremy Lin

“He’s going to be a natural spokesperson for the Christian faith and we just hope he does it well.”-- John Kim of New York

. . . By Sunday, the story of Lin, a committed Christian, had worked its way into church services — notably those in New York with large numbers of Asian-American congregants.

The children of Asian immigrants, like Lin, account for a sizable part of the explosion of theologically conservative churches — catering largely to young, college-educated professionals — in New York City. Many attend what might be labeled second-generation Asian-American churches that have spun off from congregations with worship services in Chinese or Korean.

Jeremy Lin is on the verge of becoming the Tim Tebow of basketball. I don't mean that he's a devout Christian who is suddenly showing a remarkable ability to guide his team to victory--though he is that. I mean that the story of this New York Knicks point guard is moving beyond the world of sports fans into the culture at large.

What gives this story legs is that (1) Lin graduated from Harvard, whose basketball program has never been dubbed "gateway to the NBA," and (2) he is Asian-American.

"Sometimes you come up against a mountain and you end up making the mountain seem bigger than God," said Lin, who spoke with this newspaper via phone on the condition that questions be limited to the issue of his spirituality.

His devout Christianity, bred at the Chinese Church in Christ in Mountain View, has been his guide since he was young. But Lin admits these last few months were a test unlike any before.

"In high school, a few of us were known to party on Friday nights after the games. Jeremy was known for teaching the bible to kids and spending time with his family," said his Palo Alto High teammate Brad Lehman. "None of the usual distractions were an issue for him."

Move over Tim Tebow. There’s another squeaky clean professional athlete breaking out of the pack to inspire sports fans of all ages. . . .

Like Tim Tebow, Lin’s Christian faith is more than mere posturing for the media and fans. In an interview during his senior year at Harvard, he recalled that while he grew up in a Bible believing church, “I didn’t really become a Christian until I was a freshman in high school. That’s when the gospel really started to make sense to me and I was ready to give my life to God.”

He added that “Christianity didn’t become a significant part of my approach to basketball until the end of my high school career and into college. That’s when I began to learn what it means to play for the glory of God.”

“… I just tried to hold on to a lot of the stuff in the Bible that God gives to trust, have joy in the sufferings, and trust in His perfect plan. That’s what I tried my best to do and I’m thankful the way things turned out.”